'A Hard Day's Night': 50 and still fresh

Somewhere into the last half of "A Hard Day's Night," Paul's rascal grandfather — referred to as "a clean old man" throughout the film — urges rebellion on Ringo.

Jacqueline Damian

Somewhere into the last half of "A Hard Day's Night," Paul's rascal grandfather — referred to as "a clean old man" throughout the film — urges rebellion on Ringo.

Don't stick around here with your nose in a book, he advises. Go to Tahiti and sip palm wine "before you're too old, like me."

"I never thought," Ringo muses, "but being middle-aged and all takes up most of your time, doesn't it?"

Ah, Ringo! That line is truer than you could have guessed when you uttered it at the age of 24.

The movie, newly restored for its 50th anniversary, is full of those kinds of unexpected little moments. "A Hard Day's Night" holds up wonderfully as a film, not just an artifact of Beatlemania. It may even be a comic masterpiece, comparable to the best Marx Brothers romps or Peter Sellers vehicles.

It's also, of course, full of music — songs that are fresh and thrilling half a century on.

You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Beatles. So even though I had already seen the restored version a month ago on TCM, I was excited to discover the Black Bear Film Festival was bringing the new cut of "A Hard Day's Night" to the Milford Theatre last weekend.

My husband and I caught the matinee Sunday, 50 years to the day after the movie's premiere in London on July 6, 1964.

What is it about the Beatles? Why were they the ones who caused such fervor and not, say, the Temptations, Beach Boys or Four Seasons? (We saw "Jersey Boys" earlier in the weekend; Frankie Valli and company made great music too.)

At the theater, I asked a 15-year-old friend what it was she so loved about the band, but she couldn't articulate a reason. "Everything!" she said. "Everything!"

I'm no closer to an answer than Katya is, except to note that the music is sublimely happy. You can't be depressed while listening to the Fab Four. There's magic in the melodies and lyrics, in Ringo's backbeat and George's lead guitar. And those harmonies! Cue up "This Boy."

Back in '64, my best friend and I couldn't wait to see "A Hard Day's Night."

Not long afterward, we took the train from Providence to Boston.

Early scenes of the movie are set on a train. That was inspiration enough for the two us to affect what we believed to be Liverpool accents and try them out on another passenger — as it happened, an old man not unlike Paul's grandfather.

We were ridiculous, and later my mother chastised us for trying to trick a nice old gent. Did we actually fool him? I wonder.

If he did see through us, he never let on. Maybe, in the middle of those long years of middle age that Ringo spoke about, he found it entertaining to converse with a couple of English girls — even phony ones.

It's not palm wine in Tahiti, but it's something.

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